Not only does the telco have more than million shareholders, it is also widely held by self-managed super funds.

It dominates its sector, has steady earnings and its shares are on a dividend yield, after imputation credits, of more than 8.5 per cent. The official cash rate is 2 per cent.

Telstra's profit result for the December half of 2015 announced last month disappointed slightly.

Its net profit of just over $2 billion for the six months to December 31 was only slightly higher than for the same period a year earlier.

Advertisement

The company remains a cash cow, however, and slightly increased its half-year dividend to 15.5c a share compared with the 15c it paid out a year earlier.
However, the telco faces competition on all fronts – especially from Optus and Vodafone for mobile services.

And its privileged position as the dominant owner of telecommunications infrastructure is eroding as the National Broadband Network is rolled out.

Telstra is putting some its cash towards new markets that it hopes will grow its profits into the future.

"Everything the company does is being weighed against the benefits of returning capital to shareholders," he says.

"At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself do you want Telstra to just keep on returning money to you as a shareholder or do you want management to grow the company," Han says.

Telstra shareholders will also likely be asking themselves if the company is taking too many risks that could put the dividend payout under pressure.

Some will remember the disastrous forays the telco made into Asia in the early 2000s.

However, analysts say Telstra has learned lessons from the past and is applying strict disciplines to its offshore investments. Analysts say the telco's dividend is secure.

It has good free cash flow with more than enough of the financial buffer to cover dividends, at least over the nearer-term, says Elio D'Amato, chief executive of share analyst Lincoln Indicators.

Analysts say the financial health of the telco is such that after paying dividends each year and putting aside capital expenditures to sustain the business, it has something like $1 billion that can be invested or used to buy back shares.

BHP Billiton is a completely different type of company to Telstra, D'Amato says. BHP is a cyclical commodities business whose profits are at the whims of commodities' prices, he says.